


Hut 4

by steadfastasthouart



Series: Watford without Watford [3]
Category: Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell, Simon Snow series - Gemma T. Leslie
Genre: Barracks, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Magic, Obliviousness, Watford, merwolves (mentioned), no magic here, talking it through, weird physical tasks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 20:49:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3704487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steadfastasthouart/pseuds/steadfastasthouart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Simon's been stewing over his own predicaments and desires, Penelope and Agatha have taken on a lot of responsibility for the school in transition. It's a bit much, and both need some help dealing with the pressure.</p><p>*** Watford and its residents belong to Rainbow Rowell, author of the book <em>Fangirl</em>, in which they first appeared. ***</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Elbow Grease

As usual, Agatha's serene attempts to calm Penelope down seemed to have left her more agitated than ever. It was true that Pen had been in a state all morning, but then, what right-minded person wouldn't be? They couldn't all find peace and contentment in arranging bedrolls and sorting work assignments.

Because they'd stepped into leadership roles the night before, the two had been tasked with ongoing organization of the relocation effort, and they had plunged in wholeheartedly: scouting the RAF base, drafting some plausible press releases about vague but menacing geothermal activity below the Watford campus—the professors had been laughably clueless about how to conjure a mundane cover story for the Humdrum's calamitous Occupation—and setting the wheels of movement in motion.

Now, though, bent together over a makeshift desk, Agatha sensed that Penny needed something physical to divert her, even for a few minutes, from the unsolvable problem of how to oust the Humdrum. Penny was mumbling to herself as she shuffled duty rosters—something about simultaneous cascading spells from overseas—and clearly it was time Agatha took charge.

“There's no grime you can't beat with elbow grease,” she said, checking the clock and marking a few changes on the roster.

The air and hard work (and, Agatha was pretty sure, her own easy companionship) helped immeasurably. In minutes, Penelope had lost the pinched and frightened look of a person singlehandedly responsible for the world's salvation, and instead appeared content to allow her shirt to untuck itself and her hair to trickle loose from its braids as she stapled the sheets of plastic into the crumbling wood of the barracks huts' ancient windowframes.

By the time they'd reached Hut 4, Pen was actually laughing. “I can't begin to explain the complete muck that is my brain, Aggie; it's like the Humdrum whirled it up in a blender and it's dripping slowly back into place. I keep scheming, thinking _Perhaps if we combine classical poetry magic with a selection of locally-sourced charms and talismans to be baked into a cake by a visiting Mage..._ , forgetting, of course, that the crux of the matter is that there's no magic here now.”

Agatha smiled warmly. “We really ought to set out a sign, oughtn't we?”

Penelope cackled, a little too wildly, as she stretched plastic to cover a few shattered panes high in the hut's eastern wall. “'Watford School of Magicks: Not Quite in Watford, No Magic Here, But Perhaps Still a School.'”

“Very much a school,” a satisfied Agatha protested, glad to see Penny in sunnier spirits, and gesturing to the hordes of young people flocked across the grounds, hauling furniture and brooms and luggage. “How else do you account for all the students?”

* * *

Inside, the huts were long and low and dim, each large enough to house twenty or more of the little metal beds.

“Sure hope everyone's had their tetanus boosters,” Penelope mused, eyeballing the rusty springs of the beds lined up in Hut 4. Then, suddenly and unaccountably, as she unrolled the next length of transparent plastic, her eyes were full and brimming over.

Ready for any eventuality, Agatha clicked the safety catch back onto the staple gun and wrapped her arms around her friend.

“Pen,” she said. “It's not your job to fix this.”

Penny just sobbed. She sobbed like she hadn't for years—not since before she'd had magic—till her glasses were fogged and streaming and Agatha's shoulder was soaked in the liquid evidence of her total inability to protect the place and the people that she loved.

Agatha was really good at hugs. She seemed so slight, but her bones must be titanium or something equally indestructible. She held Penelope close, her little birds' hands snug against Penelope's shoulder-blades, till the sobs slowed and quieted and the dark room stilled.

Agatha produced a handkerchief from her skirt pocket. “It's really not down to you,” she said again, offering the monogrammed cloth. “It may sound trite, but we're all in this. If times were normal, you're right: I'd expect you to lead us. You're the best in our year; maybe the best Watford's ever known. But without magic, well, it's anyone's guess.”

“So what do we do?” Penelope asked, mopping her eyes and almost begging for advice. “Don't tell me we wait.”

Agatha chuckled softly. “As if anyone would ask that of you, Penelope Bunce. You are constitutionally incapable of patience. No—we work, and learn, and train, and scheme—“

“With no magic.” Penny's words tasted bitter as roots.

“No. Not quite.” Agatha looked at her evenly, a soft smile behind the eyes. Most of the students looked plainer without their magical enhancements, but Agatha still radiated loveliness. “In fact, not at all. I take it back. It's a very different thing, Penelope, to say that there's _no magic_ than to say that we're _without it_. It's like the difference between early dawn in a black-and-white movie and in color—in that one film still, they both look the same, but you know the latter's going to transform spectacularly any moment.”

“You really think we'll get it back?”

“Of course I do.”

* * *

A few minutes later, mostly set to rights, Penelope insisted that they continue with their weatherproofing. She was just measuring the last window when the flimsy door sprang open and nearly smacked her in the shoulder. The deeply embarrassed entrant, bearing a teetering pile of clean linens, turned out to be Osiris Wallis.

“I'm so sorry!” he exclaimed as he attempted to set down his load without upsetting it onto the floor. “Didn't realize anyone was here. I really ought to have knocked.”

Penelope insisted that she was fine.

“We're just finishing,” she said, awkwardly remembering her dance with Osiris the night before, his sparkling eyes, broad lips, sure hands, and also afterward, on the lawn, when she'd brazenly ripped his clothes away to help him breathe.

He explained, averting his eyes, that he'd been sent to arrange bedclothes, but that none of the huts seemed to contain mattresses yet.

“I know just who ought to be working on that,” Agatha commented from behind Penelope. Pen had, for a brief second, forgotten she was there. “Excuse me, will you?” And she slipped out into the sunshine, task list in hand, leaving Penelope and Osiris alone in the dim room.


	2. Merwolves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kisses and compassion.

“I, well...” Osiris began, nervously strumming a thumb across his fingernails. “I am so grateful for your help last night. When I came to, outside, I thought I was drowning. I was so afraid. I'm not ashamed to say I thought I might be dying; my life had shriveled to something so small and bleak that I thought I could see its end. And then you...”

“I took some terrible liberties, I'm afraid.” Penelope blushed. “I'm dreadfully sorry about your shirt and tie, but you looked like you were choking.”

“Yes,” he agreed, taking a step closer, “some terrible liberties, such that I jolted to consciousness shivering in the cold night air in a shocking state of undress.”

“I'm sure no one noticed,” she said, as earnestly as she could muster while thinking _But Crowley, if they had, not even the Humdrum could've dragged them away._ “No one else was paying us any attention.”

“But _I_ was paying attention.” His thumb was rubbing tight circles over the tips of his littlest fingers, reminding her of one of the physical warm-ups they'd done as first-years in Wand-Handling. How Osiris had grown since then. “I always pay attention to you, Penelope, but I thought you didn't notice.”

 _I didn't_ , she thought, stricken. _I_ don't. _How in blazes have I missed this?_

“But then last night, when we danced, you were so joyous and alive and receptive in my arms, and I thought maybe I'd be brave enough to finally say something. And I was really going to, until the—everything … everything happened. And I woke up in the cold and the only warm thing was your hand on my chest.” At that, he finally looked right at her—bashfully direct, awkward, eyes twinkling like stars in negative—and he saw there the right thing: a girl who'd been trying in vain to convince herself that every person's chest housed electrical currents, that it would be unethical to make out with someone who might only reciprocate out of gratitude. “You are so intelligent and brave and loyal,” he continued. “I feared if I didn't speak today, I would never again dare to try to catch your notice.”

“I don't notice _anything_ ,” Penelope confessed, looking up at his frankly wondering face, at that stunning mouth wide and vulnerable in her presence—and surprised to consider that her disheveled hair and shirttails and tear-splotched glasses might look, in his eyes, less like remnants of an outgrown childhood than like souvenirs of adventure. “But I see you now.”

She reached an open hand forward—and really, where did that daring come from if not from his own faith in her bravery?—not even full extension, since they were really very close now, and pressed it to the front of his chest. Through every knuckle, she could feel the living strength of him, muscles underscored with shaky breath.

Smiling gently, he ran his nervous fingers across a loose strand of her hair. His eyes and body were an encyclopedia of questions.

“Please,” she said, hearing the unsteadiness in her own voice now, too, “just kiss me.” Then, towing him away from the window, she set in to explore his lips as fully as she could.

* * *

Coincidentally, she and Agatha ended up assigned to bunks in Hut 4, and perhaps less coincidentally, Penelope chose the one nearest a certain poorly-lit corner.

There was a holiday aspect to this whole enterprise, Penelope thought after dinner that night, when the eighth-years organized a bonfire on the old tarmac. She'd missed most of the bonfire in a private meeting with Professors McCormick, Boreas, and Desai—a meeting twice as long as strictly necessary thanks to Boreas's need to clarify every comment to the point of obviation—and crept into the crowd awkwardly after, seeking out Agatha or Simon or another friend who could help her forget the despair in her teachers' eyes.

Instead, Osiris took her hand, a deep and low handhold that no one else would notice in the throng of students and the flickering light of the fire—which, she couldn't help but note, made him look rather like a bronze statue come alive. (The Colossus of Rhodes came to mind— _yet another example of the infinite fallibility of even the best of human brains,_ she thought distantly _.)_ In the warmth and bewildering comfort of the fireside, she became aware of all that had transpired in the last day and night, and that she was quite tired, and that her friends were nowhere in sight.

Tugging Osiris down to her level, she inquired after them.

He'd been assigned to the same hut as Simon, he said, and figured Simon was probably there with whichever monitor had duty—word of Simon's surveillance, and of his disgust with it, had spread quickly. And Agatha had been here, but she'd wriggled briskly out of the circle a few minutes ago.

“Thanks,” Penelope said, watching more than firelight dance in his eyes and wishing to stay crushed against him in this happy mob. “I'm really sorry, but I need to go find her.”

He literally kissed her hand before he let go.

* * *

She found Agatha on a hillock not so far away, back to the crowd, knees drawn up to her chest, facing where you'd see the Watford campus if you could see in the dark and there weren't all those trees in between. Even from behind, in the dull light of her electric torch, it was clear that Agatha had been crying.

“Ag?”

“Present.” Her voice was thin and tight with control.

Penelope settled in close beside her friend on the damp grass, remembering how Agatha had talked her through her own fears that morning. “Why's it getting to you _now_? Is it harder at night?”

After a false start that required some nose-blowing, Agatha tried again: “I was just at the bonfire, thinking _How jolly convenient this is; when we're at Watford we always have to cross the bridge and trek to the clearing before we can have a good nonmagical burn_ , and for whatever reason, all of a sudden I thought of the merwolves under the bridge, and perhaps it's stupid, but I thought _, what of them? Without magic, will they drown?_ ” She looked expectantly at Penny.

Penny waited. “Wait. Are you asking me?”

“Well, yes, I suppose I am. Will they drown?”

She thought it over carefully before answering. It was clear that this question was about more than just the nightmarish guardians of the school's moat. “I think not. Even with the Humdrum in power, magical creatures are more than just magic. They're living creatures.” She chuckled self-consciously, feeling rather like redundant Professor Boreas. “I mean to say, perhaps the merwolves have had to become less wolfish and more _mer_ , or perhaps just more animal and less fantastic, but they can't have succumbed entirely. We're here, and we remember our magic even though we can't use it; and, well, think of Pitch. _He's_ obviously still stalking about the place. There's magic twined up in the _creature_ part of him, and I think in us all—even though we're, of course, different to him.” She was prattling on now, but it felt important. “When we get Watford back, it won't be a return to normal, but it's like you told me earlier: that  _won't_ be because magic has died. It'll be because we've learned to value it more.”

Agatha leaned forward into her hands and shuddered out what must have been the closest facsimile of a sob that any Wellbelove could permit herself to produce. “Pen, I already value it. It's all we have.”

Penelope put a warm hand on the gooseflesh of Agatha's bare knee. “It's not.”


End file.
